Knowledge = Power

First published in 1841,  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is often  cited as the best book ever written about market psychology. This  Harriman House edition includes Charles Mackay's account of the three  infamous financial manias - John Law's Mississipi Scheme, the South Sea  Bubble, and Tulipomania. Between the three of them, these historic  episodes confirm that greed and fear have always been the driving forces  of financial markets, and, furthermore, that being sensible and clever  is no defence against the mesmeric allure of a popular craze with the  wind behind it. In writing the history of the great financial  manias, Charles Mackay proved himself a master chronicler of social as  well as financial history. Blessed with a cast of characters that  covered all the vices, gifted a passage of events which was inevitably  heading for disaster, and with the benefit of hindsight, he produced a  record that is at once a riveting thriller and absorbing historical  document. A century and a half later, it is as vibrant and lurid as the  day it was written. For modern-day investors, still reeling from  the dotcom crash, the moral of the popular manias scarcely needs  spelling out. When the next stock market bubble comes along, as it  surely will, you are advised to recall the plight of some of the  unfortunates on these pages, and avoid getting dragged under the wheels  of the careering bandwagon yourself.

The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent  times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the  Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as  the "most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any  source." Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage  of the KGB's secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of  its worldwide network. Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked  in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified  files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in  exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The  archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the  1980s and includes revelations concerning almost every country in the  world. But the KGB's main target, of course, was the United States.  Though there is top-secret material on almost every country in the  world, the United States is at the top of the list. As well as  containing many fascinating revelations, this is a major contribution to  the secret history of the twentieth century. Among the topics and  revelations explored are: The KGB's covert operations in the United  States and throughout the West, some of which remain dangerous today.  KGB files on Oswald and the JFK assassination that Boris Yeltsin almost  certainly has no intention of showing President Clinton. The KGB's  attempts to discredit civil rights leader in the 1960s, including its  infiltration of the inner circle of a key leader. The KGB's use of radio  intercept posts in New York and Washington, D.C., in the 1970s to  intercept high-level U.S. government communications. The KGB's attempts  to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology  corporations. KGB covert operations against former President Ronald  Reagan, which began five years before he became president. KGB spies who  successfully posed as U.S. citizens under a series of ingenious  disguises, including several who attained access to the upper echelons  of New York society.

THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF PITCH ANYTHING IS BACK TO FLIP YOUR ENTIRE APPROACH TO PERSUASION. Is  there anything worse than a high-pressure salesperson pushing you to  say "yes" (then sign on the dotted line) before you're ready? If  there's one lesson Oren Klaff has learned over decades of pitching,  presenting, and closing long-shot, high-stakes deals, it's that people  are sick of being marketed and sold to. Most of all, they hate being  told what to think. The more you push them, the more they resist. What  people love, however, is coming up with a great idea on their own, even  if it's the idea you were guiding them to have all along. Often, the  only way to get someone to sign is to make them feel like they're  smarter than you. That's why Oren is throwing out the  old playbook on persuasion. Instead, he'll show you a new approach that  works on this simple insight: Everyone trusts their own ideas. If,  rather than pushing your idea on your buyer, you can guide them to  discover it on their own, they'll believe it, trust it, and get excited  about it. Then they'll buy in and feel good about the chance to work  with you. That might sound easier said than done, but  Oren has taught thousands of people how to do it with a series of  simple steps that anyone can follow in any situation. And as you'll see in this book, Oren has been in a lot of different situations. He'll  show you how he got a billionaire to take him seriously, how he got a  venture capital firm to cough up capital, and how he made a skeptical  Swiss banker see him as an expert in banking. He'll even show you how to  become so compelling that buyers are even more attracted to you than to  your product. These days, it's not enough to make a great pitch. To get attention, create trust, and close the deal, you need to flip the script.

"It’s a startling and disconcerting read that should make you think twice every time a friend of a friend offers you the opportunity of a lifetime.” —Erik Larson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and bestselling author of Devil in the White City Think you can’t get conned? Think again. The New York Times bestselling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes explains how to spot the con before they spot you. “[An] excellent study of Con Artists, stories & the human need to believe” –Neil Gaiman, via Twitter A  compelling investigation into the minds, motives, and methods of con  artists—and the people who fall for their cons over and over again. While cheats and swindlers may be a dime a dozen, true conmen—the  Bernie Madoffs, the Jim Bakkers, the Lance Armstrongs—are elegant,  outsized personalities, artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust.  How do they do it? Why are they successful? And what keeps us falling  for it, over and over again? These are the questions that journalist and  psychologist Maria Konnikova tackles in her mesmerizing new book. From multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes to small-time frauds, Konnikova  pulls together a selection of fascinating stories to demonstrate what  all cons share in common, drawing on scientific, dramatic, and  psychological perspectives. Insightful and gripping, the book brings  readers into the world of the con, examining the relationship between  artist and victim. The Confidence Game asks not only why we  believe con artists, but also examines the very act of believing and how  our sense of truth can be manipulated by those around us.

When you react, the event controls you. When you respond, you're in control. Verbal Judo is the classic guide to the martial art of the mind and mouth that can  help you defuse confrontations and generate cooperation, whether you're  talking to a boss, a spouse, or even a teenager. For more than a  generation, Dr. George J. Thompson's essential handbook has taught  people how to communicate more confidently and persuasively in any  situation. Verbal Judo shows you how to listen and speak more  effectively, engage others through empathy (the most powerful word in  the English language), avoid the most common conversational disasters,  and use proven strategies to successfully express your point of view -  and take the lead in most disputes. This updated edition includes a new foreword and a chapter featuring Dr. Thompson's five universal truths of human interaction: People feel the need to be respected People would rather be asked than be told People have a desire to know why People prefer to have options over threats People want to have second chances Stop being frustrated and misunderstood. Stop finding yourself on the losing end of an argument. With Verbal Judo you'll be able to have your say - and say what you mean.

A master class in the art of persuasion, as taught by  professors ranging from Bart Simpson to Winston Churchill, newly revised  and updated. The time-tested secrets taught in this book  include Cicero's three-step strategy for moving an audience to action,  and Honest Abe's Shameless Trick for lowering an audience's  expectations. And it's also replete with contemporary techniques such as  politicians' use of code language to appeal to specfic groups and an  eye-opening assortment of persuasive tricks, including the Eddie Haskell  Ploy, the Belushi Paradigm, Stalin's Timing Secret, and the Yoda  Technique.    Whether you're an inveterate lover of language  books or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments on the page,  at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Warm,  witty, erudite, and truly enlightening, it not only teaches you how to  recognize a paralipsis when you hear it, but also how to wield the  weapons of persuasion the next time you really, really, want to get your  own way.

Timeless techniques of effective public speaking from ancient Rome's greatest orator

National Book Award Finalist TIME Magazine's #1 Nonfiction Book of 2012 A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2012 Best Nonfiction of 2012: The Wall Street Journal, The Plain Dealer In the much-anticipated follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag,  acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history  of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and  transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its  sway. Iron Curtain describes how, spurred by Stalin and his  secret police, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and  what daily life was like once they were complete. Drawing on newly  opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts  translated for the first time, Applebaum portrays in chilling detail the  dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of  life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they  had accumulated. As a result the Soviet Bloc became a lost civilization,  one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics  Applebaum captures in these electrifying pages.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The  Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity,  why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward  nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and  Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under  siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was  one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about  antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and  autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political  systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing,  especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone  else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.

Of all the despots of our time, Joseph Stalin lasted the longest and  wielded the greatest power, and his secrets have been the most jealously  guarded—even after his death. In this book, the first to draw  from recently released archives, Robert Conquest gives us Stalin as a  child and student; as a revolutionary and communist theoretician; as a  political animal skilled in amassing power and absolutely ruthless in  maintaining it. He presents the landmarks of Stalin’s rule: the class  with Lenin; collectivization; the Great Terror; the Nazi-Soviet pact and  the Nazi-Soviet war; the anti-Semitic campaign that preceded his death;  and the legacy he left behind. Distilling a lifetime’s study,  weaving detail, analysis, and research, Conquest has given us an  extraordinarily powerful narrative of this incredible figure. “Thoughtful and thorough and shot through with insight.”—The Washington Post Book World “Definitive . . . a magnificent, even poetic, act of historical retribution.”—The New Leader “Brilliant . . . this book probably is the most cogent and readable account of Stalin’s life yet published.”—The San Diego Union